Vali
Name: Valentin Aldea
Age: 24
Foreing languages: Spanish > English > French
2010 mileage: ~ over 10k km
Current cycling objective: Oetztal Cycle Marathon
Find me on Facebook
Perhaps I was not an inborn cycling talent. I had to get over a long series of bruises in order to effectively control the bike. But I never stopped, and I don’t think I will stop anytime soon. As the passion grew, the first road bike came, then the first full suspension. I do my best to keep them both in good condition. I always follow cycling news, the new technologies and trends. I’ve advised many friends to buy a bike. A Lynskey titanium, full-polished took my eye and it’s my top 1 road bike-related wish. As for the car, I turn to it only when truly necessary.
One day, at a training camp in mountaineering, a colleague hearing me saying a few words in Spanish said she knows a travel agency which urgently needs a mountain guide. I was lucky to find a job which combines business and pleasure: tourist guide. Since then, in 2004, and until now, I’ve been working with leading Romanian tourism agencies. Whether it was for individual tourists or 30-40 people groups, in most of the cases, they left Romania with a smile on their faces.
In 2009, I obtained a degree in Law from the University of Bucharest and now I dedicate myself to the second faculty of Economic Studies.
Mircea about Vali: in September 2010 we celebrate 10 years since we know each other and almost 5 since we ride together. I’m sure the next 10 years will be more adventurous and full of cycling achievements, particularly in Romania, but also across borders. We graduated from the same high-school, we were together when we attended the first mountain biking competition and also for our first climbing of the Transfăgărășan.
romaniabybike.com is another successful cyclo-project that we develop together.
One of my favourite quotes: “Every time I see an adult on a bicycle, I no longer despair for the human race.” – H.G. Wells
Mircea
Name: Mircea-Ștefan Racoviceanu
Age: 24
Foreing languages: English > French > German
2010 mileage: ~ over 10k km
Current cycling objective: Oetztal Cycle Marathon
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I was really old when I learned to ride a bike – 14 years old, spending a part of my summer vacation at a monastery. After two weeks of riding all day long an old Pegasus, I broke my left hand. Then I lost a whole day with going to the hospital. In my first year at the university I got the first radiator on wheels – a very heavy bike, I mean 
! Since then I changed a few bicycles. I go through the traffic in Bucharest almost daily – so, basically, I do an extreme sport. Family supports me in all my cycling initiatives – getting them to support me was actually the first extreme sport I practiced. In time, my girlfriend became convinced and she travels the country far and wide with us. When I’ll gather my first 10 grands I will buy a Cervelo. I don’t have a car or a driving license and I don’t want any.
Since I started to keep well in the saddle, I’ve been always supporting and promoting cycling and other ecological activities, because I love nature, sports and the mountains. Since 2007, I attended anually the Velorutionary March and now I decided to get involved even more in the work of specialized NGOs through the project romaniabybike.com. Since I was 19, I led groups of up to 35 people via the European youth projects I participated in, both in Romania and abroad. In 2008, I graduated from the Faculty of Political Sciences, University of Bucharest, I worked about three years as an editor for Șapteseri and also with many NGOs. In 2008 I completed a six month Internship at the European Centre for Modern Languages, in Graz, Austria – believe it or not, it was difficult to take the decision to leave the country.
Vali about Mircea: I met him in high school but I didn’t know for long that he shares my passion for cycling. Only later, talking on Yahoo Messenger, I found that he was “envying me” from the 10th grade because my parents let me come to school by bicycle. For the second year of college, I began to pedal more seriously and then we became companions in many expeditions. With experience as a mountain guide, I dream to do as many cycling tours as possible, so it was enough to hear from Mircea about romaniabybike.com in order to get myself fully involved in the project.
One of my favourite quotes: “People like to travel: that is why the grass is greener over the fence. Our natural means of travel is to put one foot in front of the other. The bicycle seduces our basic nature by making walking exciting. It lets us take 10-foot strides at 160 paces a minute. It is not only how fast you go – cars are faster and jet planes faster still. But jet-plane travel is frustrating boredom – at least the car gives the pictorial illusion of travel. Cycling does it all – you have the complete satisfaction of arriving because your mind has chosen the path and steered you over it; your eyes have seen it; your muscles have felt it; your breathing, circulatory and digestive systems have all done their natural functions better than ever, and every part of your being knows you have traveled and arrived.”
John Forester, Effective Cycling
